Preclearance at Foreign Airports Seen as a Necessity to Fight Terrorism

A Customs and Border Protection officer in Ireland inspecting a passenger’s travel documents as part of a preclearance program.Credit
Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times

BRUSSELS — The Department of Homeland Security is pushing to increase the number of American law enforcement personnel stationed at airports abroad to screen passengers before they board planes to the United States, officials say.

The effort would be designed to extend the United States’ border security to foreign airports as part of new initiatives to reduce the risk of potential terrorists entering the country.

Under a smaller program already in place, called Preclearance and run by United States Customs and Border Protection, officers are based at foreign airports where they collect fingerprints and photos and check travel documents before allowing passengers to board a plane traveling to the United States.

The foreign airport is responsible for many of the program’s costs, including the construction and maintenance of the space dedicated to the effort inside the airport. Passengers departing those airports are treated the same as domestic travelers, and do not have to go through customs when they arrive in the United States.

“The expansion of Preclearance in strategic locations will further strengthen our ability to identify those who may pose a national security threat prior to encountering them on U.S. soil,” R. Gil Kerlikowske, the commissioner of the customs and border agency, said in an interview.

The agency has more than 500 people stationed at 15 foreign airports, including facilities in Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Aruba, Abu Dhabi and Ireland.

Airports with those preclearance programs accounted for about 16 million travelers in 2014, the most recent year of data, or 15 percent of all foreign visitors to the United States. The department said it would like to increase that to 33 percent of foreign passengers annually by 2024.

The proposed expansions are mostly for airports in Europe, including the one here in Brussels, which was the site of terrorist attacks in March. Other airports under consideration include Turkey’s Istanbul Ataturk Airport, which was the target last month of a terrorist attack, and Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, which was used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber, in 2009 for his failed attempt to detonate a bomb on a plane bound for Detroit.

Homeland Security officials said that, in 2015, more than 10,700 people were refused entry to the United States after being screened by customs officers at foreign airports. While some of the denials were based on national security issues, most were for people who had a criminal record or lacked a proper visa.

Counterterrorism experts say the preclearance program adds an extra level of protection against attacks in the United States by creating a security buffer thousands of miles from its borders. “The further out you can push the border the better,” said Tom Ridge, the first secretary of Homeland Security who is now the president of Ridge Global, a security consulting firm.

Legislation written by Senators Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, and Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, would encourage the Department of Homeland Security to expand the preclearance program to the 38 countries that have visa-waiver agreements with the United States. Under the visa-waiver program, foreign visitors are allowed to stay in the country for 90 days without a visa. The legislation was included as part of a trade bill signed into law in February by President Obama.

Ralph Goodale, Canada’s minister of public safety, said the preclearance program has been “tremendously beneficial for both of our countries.” He added that it provides an effective way to move people quickly across the border between Canada and the United States, and enhances security between the two countries. Preclearance began in 1952 in Toronto, primarily as a way to streamline the customs process for passengers arriving at American airports from Canada.

At Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, travelers go through standard Canadian security and then to an American customs screening area where they are questioned and their names are checked against a security database.

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Before a recent flight to Dulles International Airport in Washington from Montreal-Trudeau, at least two passengers were denied permission to board after a security search flagged something in their travel records. Officials said it was probably a minor issue, such as the name on the airline ticket not matching the name on the passenger’s passport.

“But the key is that we are able to spot a problem before a person gets on a plane and lands in the U.S.,” said Gregory Starr, the port director for Customs and Border Protection at the Montreal airport. “While we don’t have the authority to arrest or detain them, we can at least send them back out onto the street here.”

Many European countries and airlines have embraced the program because they believe it would ease the burden on passengers traveling to American airports.

But not everyone likes the idea of preclearance. Some European lawmakers say they are uncomfortable with having American law enforcement officers operating in their countries, and are concerned about how data collected by the Department of Homeland Security would be used.

“We see this as the extension of a longstanding practice of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which already has personnel here, imposing bans on people traveling to America,” said Matthias Monroy, an assistant to Andrej Hunko, a member of the German Parliament who has been critical of American law enforcement personnel operating in Germany. “They say they are merely making suggestions to the airlines to deny people, but the airlines don’t feel like they can refuse.”

The program has also been criticized in the United States. In 2013, lawmakers challenged Homeland Security officials for approving a preclearance facility in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, before the Transportation Security Administration could certify that the airport met American screening and security standards.

David J. Bentley, an analyst at the Center for Aviation in Manchester, England, who has studied the preclearance program, said the most recent selection of airports by the Homeland Security Department for preclearance clearly showed more of a focus on security than travel.

“Most of the airports selected have a history of being used by jihadists as an entry and exit point to launch terrorist attacks,” he said. “It seems that counterterrorism needs are driving the process rather than long customs queues at U.S. airports.”

Mr. Kerlikowske of the customs and border agency said a preclearance protocol would most likely have prevented Mr. Abdulmutallab from boarding a flight in Amsterdam during his attempt to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear. While he was in the air, United States customs agents had flagged Mr. Abdulmutallab as a person of interest to be questioned once he landed in Detroit.

Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, has called the preclearance program “a Homeland Security imperative” and said it allowed the government to “extend our homeland security beyond our borders and address threats as far from the homeland as possible.”

Airports such as the one here in Zaventem, just outside of Brussels, are the type of facility officials had in mind when considering locations for the program’s expansion. Even before the attack in March, American intelligence officials had worried that the airport could be used by militants to reach the United States. Officials in Belgium are still examining the costs and legal issues associated with setting up a preclearance facility.

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2016, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Preclearance at Foreign Airports Is Seen as a Necessity to Fight Terrorism. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe